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After escaping from slavery, Harriet Tubman became an abolitionist. She led hundreds to freedom through the Underground Railroad.(Photo: National Park Service)

April 12, 1861: The American Civil War began, lasting four years. More than 600,000 died in battle — almost as many as died in all other U.S. conflicts combined. During the war, tens of thousands of African Americans fled slavery, escaping to Union lines for freedom. By the end of the war, more than 180,000 African Americans, mostly from the South, went on to fight with the Union forces, and slavery as an institution no longer existed.

April 12, 1864: The Battle of Fort Pillow took place at Fort Pillow, 40 miles north of Memphis. According to Union sources, after the Union troops surrendered, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s men massacred the mostly African-American troops in cold blood. Confederate sources insisted, however, that the troops never surrendered. In his memoir, U.S. Gen. Ulysses Grant quoted Forrest as justifying the slaughter: “The river was dyed was the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards. … It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.”

April 12, 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed along with fellow ministers Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy after they were arrested on Good Friday in Birmingham, Alabama, for “parading without a permit” by marching downtown.

April 13, 1873: On Easter Sunday, the White League, a paramilitary group intent on securing white rule in Louisiana, clashed with Louisiana’s almost all-black state militia. The death toll was staggering: only three members of the White League died, but some 100 African-American men were killed. Of those, nearly half were killed in cold blood after they surrendered. What happened became known as the Colfax Massacre.

April 13, 1964: Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the movie, Lilies of the Field. Within three years, he was Hollywood’s top box office draw. In 1999, the American Film Institute named him one of the Greatest Male Stars of all time. In addition to acting, Poitier went on to direct movies, write a memoir and serve as an ambassador. In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.

April 14, 1775: The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage held four meetings. Reformed in 1784 as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Benjamin Franklin later served as its president.

April 14, 1853: Harriet Tubman made her first trip back South to ensure that hundreds of others that were enslaved also made their way to freedom. She was never caught, despite a $40,000 reward for her capture. In an interview, she recalled her own freedom, saying, “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such glory over everything … I felt like I was in heaven.”

April 14, 1865: President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Vice President Andrew Johnson took over as President.

April 14, 1957: Malcolm X led a demonstration outside the police station in Harlem to protest the beating of a Muslim, demanding his transfer to a hospital.

April 15, 1947: Jackie Robinson broke through the color barrier in Major League Baseball, becoming the first African-American player in the 20th century. He was active in the civil rights movement and became the first African-American television analyst in Major League Baseball and the first African-American vice-president of a major American corporation. In recognition of his achievements, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Major League Baseball has retired his number “42,” which became the title of the movie about his breakthrough.

April 16, 1862: Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, with compensation to loyal owners, and appropriated money for the voluntary removal of African Americans to Haiti, Liberia or other countries.

April 16, 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his classic “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” responding to eight white clergymen from Alabama who had chastised him breaking the law. King reminded them that everything that Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” “It is the duty of people to break unjust laws,” he wrote. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

April 17, 1960: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formed in Raleigh, N.C., at the Shaw University Conference organized by Ella Baker. SNCC helped coordinate sit-ins and other direct action. From their ranks came many of today’s leaders, including Congressman John Lewis and longtime NAACP leader Julian Bond. At the conference, Guy Carawan sang a new version of “We Shall Overcome,” which became the national anthem of the civil rights movement. Workers joined hands and gently swayed in time, singing “black and white together,” repeating, “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.”

April 18, 1941: Bus companies in New York City agreed to hire 200 African-American workers after a four-week boycott by riders led by Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a pastor for Harlem’s Abysinnian Baptist Church, the largest Protestant congregation in the U.S. Powell ran and won a City Council seat later that year. Four years later, he became a member of Congress. He served through 1972.

April 18, 1959: About 26,000 students took part in the Youth March for Integrated Schools in Washington, D.C. They heard speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., A. Phillip Randolph and NAACP leader Roy Wilkins. “In your great movement to organize a march for integrated schools,” King told them, “you have awakened on hundreds of campuses throughout the land a new spirit of social inquiry to the benefit of all Americans.”